


all i want for you

by la_victorienne



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/M, always-a-girl!/Arthur
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-02
Updated: 2011-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-15 10:39:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10554946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/la_victorienne/pseuds/la_victorienne
Summary: He knows it's her, because it's always her, and it always will be.





	

He knows she’s there when he walks in; she’s the only one who sneaks up on him, and the only one with a key. And this was always coming, after that job and that hotel room, after the quiet way they’d both hurt.

“Thought you’d be a thousand miles away,” he says in a sigh. “Heard that last one was too close a call for your comfort.”

“You mean you thought I’d be with him.”

Eames shrugs, because it’s true. “So what are you doing here?”

She stands, and turns, and her hair is down, falling in delicate waves. It makes him want to cry, or perhaps fall to his knees. It’s not like he forgets, it’s just that being so smitten with her is a surprise, sometimes.

“I want to be here,” she says, and her voice wavers.

It wouldn’t shake, if she were lying.

“Jesus, darling—” he chokes out, and it’s two steps before he has her, before he can wrap his arms around her body, can bury his face in her sweet-smelling hair. She’s choking out words, too, saying something like “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and it sounds so wrong coming from her mouth he kisses her so she’ll stop, just so she’ll shut up and let him hold her. Her mouth is warm, and sweet, and she tastes like he remembers, like coffee and chocolate and the cigarettes Cobb doesn’t know she smokes when she’s stressed. He loves it, loves her so much his knees buckle with it, and he pretends the bend was intended all along, sweeps her knees over his elbows, lifts her into the air.

“Eames, for the—”

“No,” he interrupts, and at least she’s not apologizing. “I’m going to carry you into my room, I’m going to lay you on the bed, and I’m going to kiss you until your bloody toes curl. All right?”

She could say anything. He half expects her to say piss off, to kick her way out and slam the door. Instead she closes her eyes and runs a hand through his hair, mussing it from its gel. “Okay,” she says, and he kisses her to keep from hearing how small she sounds, and then he makes good on his promise.

She kisses like she’s drowning, like his is the breath of life. He relearns all the sounds she makes, gives in to the ease of muscle memory, follows his own heart, blind. He traces familiar scars in the map of her body, hesitates only when new roadmarks are found, stories he doesn’t yet know. He finds every one, seeking, searching, tongue curling into even the deepest places. She pants, gasps above him, tugging at his hair.

“Eames, please.”

“Of course, darling, my darling. Anything.”

He swallows the sound she makes when he presses inside her, the quiet mewl, like coming home. He is anchored to her, anchoring her, each keeping the other, remembering what it felt like in the years before, what he hopes it will feel like in the years after. She keeps him tight against her, moving in only the smallest increments, deep and slow like they haven’t done since before she left for Cobb. And it’s everything he wanted, and it’s more, it’s her hands on his skin and her breath in his ear and the way his vision goes spotty when she gasps out his name, her body tightening around him. It’s the way she kisses him as he comes, lazily, like they have all the time in the world.

And maybe they do; maybe she’ll roll into his arms and bully her knee between his and pretend she’s just letting him hold her until the morning; maybe she’s already planning to stay forever. Maybe, if he’s lucky, he’ll wake up before her and make eggs and toast the way she likes them, the butter melting into the warm toast, the yolks runny. Maybe she’ll pad out in his shirt, the tails brushing the curve of her arse, and fuck him at the table, leg thrown over his lap, pale throat exposed. Maybe she’ll put the key back on her fob again, say she loves him again, grow old and fat with him. Maybe she’ll let him have a dog.

Then again, maybe she won’t.

“I can’t stay long,” she says, red nails tracing the Dali tattoo on his forearm. “Cobb’s still running, and I said I’d help.”

Eames is quiet, just waiting, holding his breath for “This was a mistake, I can’t do this, I never should have come.”

“But I have this weekend,” she says, instead, “and I could meet you after our next job is over—stateside, maybe, Chicago.” She pushes up on an elbow, makes him look at her, sees the surprise he hasn’t hidden yet. “I meant it, you idiot,” she says. “All of it. I want to be here. Sometimes I just can’t be.”

“Who are you working for?” he manages through the strangled sound in his throat. “On the next one. Who hired you?”

“Cobol, again. Run of the mill, two levels. We’ll be okay.”

“Call me, anyway. I’ll go to Mombasa and keep an ear out in case something goes wrong, and meet you in Chicago when I know you’re well safe.”

She brushes the pads of her fingers over the curve of his cheek. “I forgot you do this,” she says quietly, and there’s a smile in her voice.

“Do what?”

“Have my six, Eames. You always have my six.”

And Eames just thinks, yeah, I do, and lies back in the pillows to grin at the ceiling. “Eggs for breakfast, then?”

Arthur laughs, and nods. “Yeah, okay. Eggs for breakfast sounds great.”

It’s not perfect, not yet. But it’ll do.


End file.
